How to Keep Up With Pinterest Trends & Create Killer Boards in Minutes a Day

Let’s talk Pinterest! More specifically, how to find out what’s trending on Pinterest, and how to use that to grow your boards without spending hours upon hours a day on the social media network. Now, I could literally spend an entire 8-hour work day just pinning stuff and be happy, but I’d never get anything else done. I have to limit myself to a few small bursts of time, otherwise I go down the Pinterest rabbit hole.

What really surprised me: once I developed this little method of scheduling based on trends, my repin rate went from around 800 a week to averaging between 4-5k a week. I know it’s not as high as the super pinner accounts, but for me, it was a major boost. I spend significantly less time on Pinterest, yet I’m getting more engagement, more repins, more followers and, ultimately, a boost in my own traffic because more people are seeing my stuff as well. It’s not a complicated method, it’s not even a great big secret formula or anything.

How to Keep Up with Pinterest Trends to Boost Your Engagement

Choose a few boards to really focus on

In the beginning, I was focusing on every single board every single week. I’d do like three-five pins for all of my main boards. I have 111 boards, but I’d say I was focusing on about 50 of them at a time. Too scattered! Once I started to see where my repins were coming from, I changed my method. Now, I look at which boards are getting most action and focus on those first. Then I choose one or two boards a week that I’d like to see gain traction and add those into the mix, just not as heavily.

What’s trending for me?

If you go to Pinterest and click in the search bar but don’t type anything, you’ll notice that below your recent searches, there are red entries beneath a “trending on Pinterest” heading. Did you know that this changes depending on who is looking? Olfa of OurFamilyWorld and I see different things there. Those are the things that are trending for you. Use them to plan out some of your scheduled content. That’s how I decide which board to start with.

Say “chicken parmesan pizza” is trending for me. I click it, then I schedule a few of the more beautiful, helpful and repinned pins. Then I go off that. Since I sent them to my Good Food board, I also search for other variations. Chicken recipes, chicken parmesan, pizza recipes, chicken pizza. I also look to see if other food pins are trending and send those over. Then I look to see if I have anything of my own to send over for scheduling before moving on. These trends change daily. Sometimes hourly. However, I’ve noticed two things: they repeat in a way (maybe not word for word, but general themes) and pins that I pin based on them get traction for a good week, then come up again later on. Plus, they’re already there when they trend again in the future. I try to go with the more evergreen stuff, rather than the really random weird stuff (I won’t be pinning anything about that sorority founders day, because it’s not a good fit for me and I don’t even know what it is!).

What’s trending in general?

Knowing what is going to be trending on Pinterest at any particular time is challenging, but it’s also important. You’ll never predict all the trends. All it takes is for one celeb to dye her hair pink and boom, you’ve got a pastel hair trend that takes off for months. I downloaded all the Ahalogy research reports to get a good idea of the different topics that trend at different times. I also refer back to the 2016 Pinterest trends predictions regularly. I include a mix of pins from the trends that make sense for my account and following.

Another way to find out what is trending in general: search “XXX trends SEASON YEAR” Example a “Makeup trends Spring 2016” search on Bing brings up great results on fashion shows, magazine articles, etc. I read those to see what is going to be trending this year. Then I start pinning those trends now, so they’re already on my boards when people really start looking for them.

Which holidays are coming up?

Holidays are a beautiful thing for growing your Pinterest following! For me, my most popular repins come from makeup inspired by holidays, as my Awesome Hair and Makeup Board is my number one board. Right now, I’m focusing on Valentine’s Day. I not only pin VDay themed content to a specific Valentine’s Day board, but I also pin Valentine’s Day nails to my makeup board, a few decorating ideas to my decor board, etc. It helps spread out the holiday juice to other boards.

The obvious holidays like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Halloween aren’t your only shot for getting great repins. People search for random little holidays too. Like Pie Day. I head over to Brownielocks.com once a week and check out what’s coming up, then use those holidays as inspiration too. I try to pin at least a week out for each little holiday. I start pinning for the big holidays at least a month out. For Christmas- two months out.

What am I writing about?

Since I’m ultimately trying to grow my Pinterest account so that I’ll be able to get more traffic to my own stuff, I also plan my pinning content based around my planned content. If I know I’ll be writing about a natural beauty recipe, I start pinning other beauty recipes so that mine slides right in there. I don’t want to look like I’m just throwing my stuff at my followers. I am pretty strict about the 80/20 rule – 80% other people’s stuff, 20% mine.

This little formula has really helped me not only plan my Pinterest scheduling much faster, but I’ve seen a lot of growth in my repin rate. The most important part of this formula is that in all those tips, you have to be thinking of your own Pinterest account and stay true to it. There are things I won’t repin, no matter how much they’re trending, because they’re not true to me. The second most important thing: enjoy it! Pinterest is a thing of beauty. It’s funny because I thought it was ridiculous when it first came out. Now, it’s my favorite social media network.

For more helpful Pinterest posts, visit a few of my favorite bloggers:

24 Comments

I didn’t know either until I told Olfa to try it out. I told her something that I saw trending, then she told me she saw completely different stuff. So I logged into the three different accounts for the three very different sites and saw completely different trending stuff.

Though I have been using Pinterest for past few years, I don’t have a depth knowledge about what you have explained here. These are some great tips to note so I can make sure I get the best of its impact in Social Media.